Presentation Tips 02: Speak to an Audience of One
Imagine how you might feel when you’re sitting in an audience listening to a speaker and it feels like the speaker is talking directly to you. It seems more like a one-to-one conversation despite the audience present.
Now imagine that you could convey that intimate feeling when you are the speaker.
The secret is to speak as if you’re speaking to one person. Sounds simple yet few speakers have mastered this technique.
Another silly Linkedin profile. About
Entrepreneur, innovator, visionary, embracer of change elements, and pursuer of higher learning with tenacity, patience, and judgement in decision-making resulting in a great deal of stamina and resolve mentally and physically.
Entrepreneur – So What? Innovator – So What? What did you innovate? Visionary – So What? What does this mean?
It is not about you. It’s about your audience. What did they see, hear, believe and feel? That means that during your presentation you might experience those moments of anxiety – but the audience doesn’t need to know. Confidence starts by becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Instead, he parked himself behind the lectern and boringly read the speech that someone wrote for him. Cleary the speech writer wanted to demonstrate his vocabulary by including several ten-dollar words. That doesn’t enhance comprehension, rapport or trust.
To persuade your audience to act on your message they must believe you. To be believable you must be both credible and earn their trust. If you don’t have credibility, no one will listen. If you have credibility but your audience does not trust you, they will not believe you.
A results driven professional with business and human resources mangement experience in a global environment. What mistakes do you see with this opening statement on their profile?
You might notice that it’s full of vague terms. There’s nothing specific. What has this person accomplished? Nothing that we can see. It feels cliché and nothing grabs your attention.
It appears that they have written their profile to attract “click bait”. Key words that they believe recruiters might be looking for.
Nothing specific, nothing about their accomplishments. Simple click bait or so they hope.
Marketing and selling are on the same continuum. Marketing leads to selling which leads to the sale. And no business survives without the sale.
Do you want your message to resonate with your audience? The message is more likely to land well, be received and trusted if you have connected with your audience. They must know, like and trust you. How can you accomplish that? By building rapport rapidly near the beginning of your presentation.
This was a question that was often asked in job interviews. I used to think that it was a lazy question from the interviewer. No imagination in posing that question. It was non- specific and vague. Then I realized that it might be a brilliant question because of the vagueness. The vagueness of the question would probably disrupt the comfort of the candidate. Let’s see how they handle this challenge.
The three main communication channels are processed by distinct areas within the brain. By using these channels correctly you leverage the different strengths of each channel. These channels are: Words, Voice and Visual.
